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Human remains at Vatican property could hold clue to 1983 mystery

October 31, 2018

Bone fragments were found around 7km (4miles) north of Vatican City at its embassy to Italy in the upmarket residential neighbourhood of Parioli, a Vatican statement said.

They were discovered during restructuring work on an annex to the Holy See’s imposing embassy compound near Rome’s famous Villa Borghese museum.

Rome’s chief prosecutor was called in and forensic investigators are working to determine whether they are male or female, their age and date of death.

Italian media immediately linked the discovery to the disappearance of Emanuela Orlandi, whose father was a lay employee of the Holy See, in 1983.

Ms Orlandi’s fate is one of the biggest mysteries in modern Italian history.

Her disappearance was initially linked to a possible attempt by unknown persons to win freedom for Mehmet Ali Agca, the Turkish gunman who shot Pope John Paul II in 1981 and was then serving a life sentence in an Italian jail.

Ms Orlandi, 15, went missing after leaving her family’s Vatican City apartment to go to a music lesson in Rome.

Her brother Pietro has campaigned for decades to find out what happened to her, accusing the Vatican of remaining silent in the case.

In 2012, forensic police exhumed the body of a reputed mobster from the crypt of a Roman basilica in hopes of finding Ms Orlandi’s remains as well, but officers found no link.

Last year, a leading Italian investigative journalist published a five-page document that had been stolen from a locked Vatican cabinet that suggested the Holy See had been involved in Ms Orlandi’s disappearance.

The Vatican said it was a fake, but did not explain what it was doing in the Vatican cabinet.

The document was supposedly written by a cardinal and listed supposed expenses used for Ms Orlandi’s upkeep after she disappeared.

The Vatican statement made no mention of Ms Orlandi upon the discovery of the remains.